Tutorials

Welcome, in this tutorial I’ll show you how to create animated flying arrows in Maya.

Step 1; Ok, first let’s create some arrows using Adobe Illustrator. For this tutorial I created an arrow like the one you see below.

Step 2; Now to bring in your Illustrator file to Maya, go ahead and save your file. Then when the the following options appear, tell it to save the file as an illustrator 8 format. The reason why is because Maya currently does not recognize illustrator files older than illustrator 8.

Step 3; Now that we got those awesome arrows done, let’s import them into Maya! Go to Create -> Adobe Illustrator Object options.

Select the Curves option

Step 5; When it comes in you may notice the handle not centered on the object. To correct this just go to Modify -> Center Pivot.

Step 6; Now convert your curve to a polygon object using which ever method you like. My favorite is the Surfaces -> Bevel Plus.

Step 7; Use the EP Curve tool to draw out your path that you want the arrow to follow.

Step 8; Now the next thing to do is line up your arrow to the path like such….

Step 9; Now we are going to attach the arrow to the curve by selecting your arrow and curve then going to Animate -> Motion Paths -> Attach to Motion Path options. Now these are the settings that I used, but yours might differ depending on which direction your curve and arrow are facing.

Once it’s attached it’ll look something like this…

Step 10; Now we want the arrow to bend around the path so go to Animate -> Motion Paths -> Flow Path Object options.